Top of the Lake
by DragonsDeadAndDancing
Summary: When a couple buys the Dragonborn's house, nightmares and horrors are already included in the price...
1. Chapter 1

**I know. I have 2 stories waiting to be continued. Blame the snow. Winter depressions. Whatever. Something doesn't feel right at the moment.**

**The couple has neither names nor races because I don't know. I didn't want to invent a new backstory. Maybe I'll rewrite it later.**

"**Top of the lake" or something similar is the title of a TV-show. I've just seen ads, but they were strange. And the rest belongs to Bethesda.**

**Enjoy.**

The Redguard was waiting for the couple to arrive. "Welcome, welcome", she said, using her cane as support. "Welcome to Lakeview Manor!"

Like the old woman, the home of the legendary Dragonborn had clearly seen better days before. The garden was overgrown with Trama-roots and Snowberry bushes, the stable's roof was carved in and the walls needed a lot of fresh paint. Hawks and some other kind of bird were nesting on the roof, which was white from their droppings.

"Welcome. I am Rayya, steward of the late Dovahkiin."

The man greeted her and introduced him and his wife. "Are you sure that you want to sell this estate?", he asked.

The steward sighed. "Yes. Our master has been dead for thirty years, and Gunjar and I are no longer able to look after the house. In truth", she sighed again, "I think I have waited too long. But let's look at it first."

They entered the house and were greeted by dust, cobwebs and the faint smell of skeever droppings. "As you can see", Rayya said, "there is an antechamber before the main hall." Some moth-eaten sabre cat heads were mounted on the walls and glared at the intruders angrily, teeth bared at them in an eternal growl. The shelves held nothing but dust.

"The main hall has two floors and a cellar, all of it furnished. Upstairs are two bedrooms, one for children and one for a couple. There are three additions; the library tower to the east and the alchemy tower to the north are accessible from ground and first floor, the left-wing greenhouse only from the ground level."

Some of the furniture was broken, but most of it seemed still useful. More heads (bear, sabre cat, wolf, deer), mud crabs and even a slaughterfish decorated the walls. The shelves and chests were already empty; the carriage outside was loaded with Rayya's and Gunjar's possessions. The greenhouse was in a terrible state: More Trama-root and jazbay vines had choked all the other plants and mushrooms.

In the cellar, they found shrines of all nine Divines. The woman scowled at Talos': "I thought the Dragonborn was a supporter of the Empire?"

Rayya seemed uncomfortable. "Because of a personal feud with Ulfric, yes. But for the 'Dragon in the North', it was hard to deny Tiber Septim's powers. And she hardly ever prayed to him. I think it was … respect. Not faith."

When they were finished, the Redguard sat down on a dusty chair. "Forgive me, my bones are old… What do you think?"

"Well", the man answered, choosing his words carefully, "the house seems in a sorry state…"

"It's just some dust and cobwebs. The structure will hold for forty more years."

"How much do you want?", asked the woman.

"Seven thousand. A house in Solitude has thrice the price."

The man looked at his wife and she nodded encouragingly. "Yes. We'll take it."

For the first time, the old steward smiled. "Wonderful! There's just one more issue to settle; in a nearby grove is a cemetery. Gunjar and I…when our time has come, we would like to be buried there. To be with our master and friends."

"Of course." The woman smiled at the Redguard.

The last arrangements were settled, contracts were signed, seven thousand septims got a new owner. Finally Rayya sat next to her old friend Gunjar on the carriage and waved the couple a good-bye.

During the last hours of the day, the woman started to clean the new home, while her husband ordered their possessions to be brought from their small house in Falkreath to Lakeview Manor. Dusk found them on the northern tower, watching the fading light and the lake.

"To our new home!", the made a toast. "To our future!"


	2. Chapter 2

**Read Requiem Grove. It isn't essential for this story, but it doesn't hurt. Explains background and stuff.**

The first night in their new home was peaceful and quiet. No skeevers stirred in the cellar, no owls hooted in the rafters, not even a spider spun a delicate web of beauty and death.

The water of the lake, north of the house, was calm. Its smooth surface held the secrets in a soft, soothing embrace. The dead stayed in their graves and their pained minds were at ease.

One last night of silence. Silence…before the storm.

The couple rose in the morning. After a short breakfast, both continued to clean the house. Their possessions arrived, and the man and the carriage-driver unloaded them while the woman worked in the garden. Somehow, the thick tangle of Trama roots disturbed her more than all the spiders and skeevers combined.

She saw the visitor only by coincidence; had she not looked in the direction of the small grove, she wouldn't have seen the strange woman. Clad in black, hood drawn over her head, she walked out of the cemetery. Like she could feel the woman's gaze, the visitor turned around.

"Oh! I am sorry."

"Who are you?"

"My father was a friend of the Dragonborn. I just wanted to see the hero's grave with my own eyes." Strange eyes. As the visitor came near, the woman could see that her iris was a deep golden. The stranger smiled. "I am truly sorry; I did not want to disturb you. Rayya mentioned something about selling the house in her last letter…"

"My husband and I, we bought it just yesterday."

"Well, then it is bad luck for me but good for you; Lakeview Manor is beautiful."

"Bad luck?"

The visitor smiled again. "I have to…I made a promise, and now I have to talk to Rayya and Gunjar. Do you know where they are living at the moment?"

"Hm…Whiterun, I think."

"Oh, thank you so very much. But I have to go now. A pleasure to meet you."

"Goodbye." Strange woman, she thought. And these eyes…

Her thoughts were interrupted by her husband, who came out of the house. "Should we bring your mother's – is something wrong, my love?"

"What? No, everything's alright. There was just a woman who visited the Dragonborn's grave…"

He chuckled. "Well, I guess that'll happen often. What should we do about your mother's cutlery?"

Like the evening before, the couple shared a bottle of wine on the northern tower as the sun sank lower and lower. The last rays of red sunlight danced over the lake's surface, touched the crumbled ruins of an ancient fort and even reached down to the rotting ship at the bottom.

With a sharp _bang_ the woman's chair fell backwards on the floor as she jumped to her feet. She stared on the water below them.

"What?" The man rose too, worried about his spouse.

She blinked. "Oh. It's gone."

"What?", he asked again, with more force.

"I thought I had seen something…someone…"

"It has been a long day. We ought to go to bed."

"You are probably right. This damn garden..."


	3. Chapter 3

**Yesss! I finally managed to beat myself to write another chapter! Shorter than I would like it to be, but we are slowly getting to "nightmares and horrors."**

The woman stood in the garden. Above her, the moon shone and its silver light turned the moisture from a quick rain that still lingered on the entwined roots and branches into pure ice.

And like ice the air felt, although it was summer and Falkreath Hold was in the south of Skyrim. The woman felt a strange chill through her thin nightgown. Why had she come down, in the middle of the night, to the hated tangle of plants fighting each other for dominance over this pathetic piece of soil? She didn't know.

Suddenly she heard a sound, soft and quiet, so soft and quiet that she rather felt it than sensed it with her ears. The echo of steps taken long ago, the memory of rustling leaves, the shadow of the ghost of old joy, worn thin by the decades.

The woman turned around. Eyes, filled with sorrow, met her gaze and a voice, barely audible, whispered a single word…

…and she woke up, panting, a scream escaping her lips.

Her husband jerked and raised, eyes wide and searching for danger, but he found only darkness. "What's wrong?", he asked.

"I…I was down in the garden…and somebody was there…"

The man groaned. "You just had a nightmare, my love. Try to get some sleep again."

"Yes…"

But when she rose in the morning, the woman felt like she hadn't slept at all. She barely managed to open her eyes and her answers to her husband's questions were curt and sharp like daggers. They broke their fast in silence, then went to their tasks.

The man brought the furniture in the first floor and on the tops of the small towers. As he brushed the dust from old shelves and hanged some pictures on the walls, he worried about his wife. Something about the new house clearly disturbed her. But they would be finished soon and then everything would settle.

He carefully unwrapped the thick layers of leather around Rythe Lythandas' _Sunrise over Kvatch_ when he suddenly heard a scream from outside. The man dropped the painting and ran downstairs.

The woman had been working in the garden, but now she stared at a small piece of soil which she had been liberating from plants.

A skull was staring back.

Her husband stopped at the sight. "I didn't know they had a dog", he said, trying to act normal. "Maybe the children buried it here." He dropped in a crouch and looked at the skeleton, which was half covered with earth. Still, the bones were clearly an animal's. Pretty big for a hound, but the war-dogs in Skyrim often were the size of a goat or a wolf.

He stood up and turned to his shocked wife. "No need to worry. The animal is long dead. Why don't you take a break for the rest of the day and I'll take care of this?"

The man embraced her and she nodded, eyes closed. "If it's okay for you…"

"Sure. Rest, darling."

After a light meal, the woman went to bed and her husband dug the dog's skeleton from the garden. He decided that the hound ought to stay with its master, filled the bones in a wooden box and walked, shovel in the hand, to the small graveyard in the grove.

It felt wrong here. Last time they had been there, it had been a sad but bright place, full of blossoming plants. Now a shadow seemed to cover the cemetery. Everything looked paler and…fading, worn-out, like something vital had been removed. The flowers hid their colourful blossoms and the former brilliant white stones were rather grey and dull.

The man quickly abandoned this thought. His wife's worries were afflicting him too, obviously. Instead of wondering about darkness and shadows, he dug a small, deep hole, placed the box in it and put the earth back in its place. He finished his work by covering the grave with a few stones.

Back to work! The woman was probably still sleeping inside, so her husband started to repair the old stable. It had enough room for two horses and there were signs for an old addition that had been begun but never finished. For its age, the building was still quite intact. Only a part of the roof had collapsed, but the man was able to fix it until dusk.

His wife had recovered and cooked a soup for him. As on the days before, they shared a bottle of wine on a tower – the western this time, for the man didn't want any more problems on this day.

The forest they were watching was filled with absolute silence.


	4. Chapter 4

In the woods, something stirred. It whispered words that were never heard, but the world answered to them nonetheless.

The surface of the lake started to move. Tiny waves disturbed the water. In the ruins of the ancient fort, old bones shuddered like a sudden wind had touched them, but the air was calm and quiet.

A pack of wolves, two males and a female with her new-born whelps, woke up startled. Without hesitation, they started to run, carrying the pups in their maws. Eyes wide in terror, ears pressed tightly on the skull, they fled soundlessly without looking back. They never halted, even when the she-wolf collapsed in exhaustion, but left her and her children behind.

Far above, a blood dragon was soaring under the moons at the edge of the sky. Suddenly, he started to beat the air with his wings, increasing his speed and flying north, away from the lake, and his soul shivered.

In the house, the woman trembled and woke. For a moment, she felt terrified, but then she lay down again.

The next morning came with golden sunlight and drove the last days' horrors from the house. Finally they felt at home in Lakeview Manor. The woman decided to give the garden a break; she joked that the bad food had caused all the trouble and started to clean up the small kitchen.

Her husband decided to take a walk in the sunshine. The work could wait for half an hour, he thought when he opened the door, but immediately realised he was wrong.

On the last step of the small stair that led up to the front door, a dog was lying.

No. Not a dog. The dog. The dead dog from the garden.

Its position was like an ordinary hound's: belly flat on the ground, paws crossed in front of it, the skull resting on them. For a moment, the man expected the animal to jump to its feet, wave its tail, maybe whine a little bit – whatever dogs do at their master's arrival. He took a step back.

Nothing happened. The bones stayed where they were, a small pile of dead things that hadn't moved of its own for thirty years or even more, and would definitely not start now. The man cursed himself for his fear.

He thought of his wife in the kitchen, who was probably humming a song while she cleaned, unaware of the skeleton. He couldn't tell her. This day had been beautiful so far and he didn't want to spoil it. Somebody had played them a joke. This was the only logical explanation. He would just bury the thing again and let it be.

After the dog was laid to rest for the second and hopefully last time, the man went in the cellar and continued to clean the two rooms. One held the shrines and some rotting exercise dummies, the other was filled with strongboxes, all of them empty but for cobwebs. Nothing extraordinary.

Except for the doorframe in the first room.

It did look like a doorframe, but it had no door. The rectangular wooden frame was filled with more wall, just set back from the surrounding stone. Maybe it had been covered with wood once, the man wondered, and been used as a wardrobe or something. But thus far he had not seen anything similar in the upper levels. On the other hand, in the second room in the basement were some set-back storage niches.

But still…something just felt wrong about it. The man ran his hand over the doorframe but stopped when he felt a small part of wood that felt different from the rest, at the level of his waist. He dropped to his knees and examined it. The patch or whatever was a little bit warped and by shoving a fingernail under it and prying, he managed to fully remove it. It revealed a shallow rectangular hole.

There was a golden button in it.

The man wondered what to do. So many weird things had happened in this house thus far. If he pressed the button, maybe a Dremora would appear out of thin air and slaughter him. And even if something utterly harmless would happen, his wife might finally become insane.

In the end, his curiosity got the better of him. He pressed the golden button firmly, and with a soft _whoosh, _the stone wall inside the doorframe sank into the earth. A wave of warm, humid air met the man's face and he gagged at the smell: old and stale and...wrong.

Divines and Daedra, the man thought as he took a torch from one of the chests lying around in the basement and lit it at a sconce hanging next to the doorframe. Then he stepped through it into another room. As soon as her entered, blue-white balls of magic began to glow all over the place and with a sigh he lowered the torch.

In the eerie light, his gaze was caught by one strange thing after another. There were two cages in opposite corners of the room, on the wall between them a pair of shackles. A desk stood at one wall. Above it was a line of books on a shelf. Next to the table stood another bookshelf, tall and broad yet filled. In the last two corners stood an enchanter with some soul gems arranged in neat rows on a small table and an alchemy lab. The man knew one of the basic rules of such a lab was to fill potions in pink bottles and poisons in green ones. The shelves next to the lab were very green. The table in the middle of the room had shackles to chain somebody to the surface. The most interesting part of the room was the decoration: Weapons were hanging on three of the four walls, save the one between the cages. There was a light golden bow, a sword with an orb of warm orange-yellow light in its cross-guard, a spiked war-hammer that emitted a slowly pulsating red glow, a staff topped with a black, horned skull,...

The whole room looked rather dusty but otherwise very clean. No soul gems were in disarray, no notes scattered on the tables. A red bottle and a silver goblet were standing on the desk next to the inkpot, a quill and an empty sheet of paper were already laid out. It looked like somebody had prepared it but never began to work.

The man walked towards the desk. He extinguished his torch, pulled one of the books from the shelf and flipped through the pages. It was some sort of diary, he thought: _… A woman needs her secrets … a 9-year-old should play with puppets … S33 kiled herself …_ what?

He looked again: _S33 kiled herself – inhaled crumbs of cake. Idiot_ was the cold, short note in the diary. It was part of _2__nd__ Ms_, between_ Sofie's name-day. Present: dress, Ffoulke's 'Firmament'_ and _S32 seems happy enough, he'll be fine on his own till I come back from Ds and College._

This had to be old, really old. Sofie was one of the Dragonborn's adopted daughters, wasn't she?

The next entry was _20__th__ Ms:_

_Took longer than expected but found some good books in Arc.  
><em>_B and N say I'm not with them often enough. They're old enough to need no babysitter, and the DB is thriving even in my absence (2 new recruits)  
><em>_S32 still alive, impressive. Brought new one with me. S34: female, Bosmer, 156 y. Have to hunt more meat, she eats no veg. or fruit_

The cryptic abbreviations continued through the whole book. The man skipped most of it – the script was tiny and the curt style was extremely hard to understand – but caught a phrase here and there: _… Dremora … black souls … the Blood …_ The strange S-numbers became higher and higher until:

_S100 didn't even last for 1 experiment. Congratulations, Divine and Daedra, I give up! The mechanics of the soul aren't meant for mortals or immortals to know, I got it_

Mechanics of the soul. Dremora. Black Souls.

The man let the book slip from his hands. It landed on the desk with a _thump, _muffled by the thick layer of dust and opened on the last entry:

_The Star needs to suck the power in, over a long time. I'll put it in the old ship-wreck at the bottom of the Lake  
><em>_I'm going into hibernation. S thinks I'd make it, but I know I'd walk the Golden Road in a week, I hate waiting. S promised to wake me up when it's ready. Rayya and Gunjar don't know, they'll think I'm dead  
><em>_M will hate me for it, but at least they will live_

But the man didn't see it anymore, he was running out of the room. After he told his wife about the chamber and begged her not to go in the basement, he fetched some Vigilants of Stendarr from Falkreath. At dusk, they arrived at Lakeview Manor again. While the warrior-priests swarmed out and searched the house from top to bottom, the man held the trembling woman in his arms and whispered promises that now, everything would be fine.

**The reason you get a new chapter is…Italy won! Forza Italia! (So better pray for more victories)**

**The chamber comes entirely from my imagination, so (sadly) there's no point in looking for twinkling golden buttons. ****When I'm done with Top, I'll upload the journal. It was pretty fun to write. And weird.**

**And now, leave a review and tell me what you think of it: Did I kill the story? Or is it better?**

**Pretty please.**


	5. Chapter 5

**Please forgive me my slip into humour at the beginning…I couldn't help it. The first half is rather uneventful but was fun to write, while the second was a bit of a b- but definitely more interesting. I'm still not happy with it.**

**We also have more protagonists now. Be sure to tell me what you think.**

In this night, fog rose over the lake. It formed a cloud over the smooth surface, then crept higher and wider. The mist swooped over the castle ruins, the rotting remains of the burnt mill, the buried treasures on the shore and finally reached Lakeview Manor. Like a living beast with hundreds of tentacles, its thin white fingers wound through the trees. They lingered in the garden, seemed to sniff at the soil and the plants. At the stable, they halted again. The horse which had drawn the Vigilant's cart rolled its big dark eyes in fear and tried to escape the harmless tendrils of fog but the rope that bound it to a tree didn't give. It had to watch helplessly as the mist caressed the sides of the house and curled around the building in a cold, loving embrace.

And things followed the fog.

The couple hardly slept that night while the dozen Vigilants restlessly raided the house from top to bottom, but except for the secret room in the basement, they found nothing. The list of artefacts that had anything to do with Daedric magic or necromancy grew almost endlessly: Of black soul gems alone there were sixty-nine, filled to the brim. Extremely rare and expensive ingredients, various exotic potions and poisons made from them, and the recipes to brew them took Stendarr's devouts almost an hour to count.

Only powerful spells could keep the prizes bestowed upon the Dragonborn by the Daedric Princes in check: The Ebony Blade repeatedly tried to seduce the Vigilants by whispering secrets in unsuspecting minds, Namira's ring ate a finger, and three burly Nords were needed to carry Volendrung, the ancient Dwemeri war-hammer, upstairs – Theresias, the local leader of the Vigil suspected the weapon did this on purpose. Sanguine's Rose unleashed a font of alto wine as somebody sniffed at the blossom, the Wabbajack turned Spellbreaker into a wheel of cheese and itself into a silver fox, and several people fell asleep as they looked in the eyes of the Skull of Corruption for too long. Not to mention the incident when a tiny Breton cut her finger at the edge of Mehrune's Razor and for a few seconds nobody dared to breath but simply stared at the trembling girl's hand, waiting for her to drop dead.

When they were done, they had eleven Daedric artefacts from one Prince each, the wheel of cheese as the twelfth and the runaway fox was number thirteen. Two weapons were identified to be Nocturnal's gifts and several items – a set of murky green robes, the Oghma Infinium, and a tentacle-spitting staff – probably belonged to Hermaeus Moa.

Azura's prize was missing.

The Dragonborn had been famous for being a champion of each of the Daedric Princes, and the Twilight Queen had been famous through all the centuries for gifting hers with her Star, an unlimited soul gem. But it wasn't in the basement. The Vigil raided the house for a second time which again yielded no result. For a few hours the light bow, its colour a pale gold, was suspected to belong to the Prince. As soon as some elven arrows covered in dark, dried blood were found though, it was quite sure to be Auriel's Bow, the legendary weapon to blot out the sun.

Meanwhile Vigilant Tomasius was trying to decipher the journal found in the secret room. It was hard work; while the others fought against Daedric magic, his enemies were abbreviations. Around noon, he had enough information to determine this was indeed about necromancy. The author of the book had probably made experiments on the nature of the soul, although not very successful. A part of the notes – around First Seed 207 – were simply a list of dead persons, when the Frostbite plague had killed half of Skyrim.

When Theresias was informed about this, his other Vigilants had already retrieved most of the basement's contents and carefully piled them in the antechamber.

"We are taking these things with us to Falkreath", the leader of the Vigil told the couple. "I highly advise you to accompany us, this manor isn't safe for anyone. Until we have confirmed there is no threat left, you can stay at our quarters."

After they'd thanked the Vigilant, they offered their help in moving the artefacts, which Theresias gladly accepted. "Everyone ready?", he asked.

A golden-eyed Bosmer answered: "Tomasius is still upstai-"

A shrill cry from outside interrupted her, followed by the sound of mages' armour being cast and maces being drawn. "What was that?", the woman whispered.

Theresias opened the door.

It was dark outside, although it was mid-afternoon. Mist, thicker than any the men and women had ever seen, filled the air which was ice-cold as it crept through the doorframe.

"Light!", commanded Theresias. He couldn't see past an arm's length through the fog but heard a sound. A painful, ragged…breathing? Two of his men obeyed and conjured small balls of light hovering over their shoulders, their shine adding to Theresias' own mage light. He beckoned them to follow and stepped over the threshold.

A thin tendril of mist curled around the tiny glowing orb and it vanished.

Silently cursing dark magic, necromancy, and the waters of Oblivion, Theresias ordered a few torches. Armed with fire, several of his men stepped outside, its shine cutting through the fog.

The horse had finally managed to break the rope, yet it hadn't gotten far. Just next to the tree it was lying, the flesh on its legs ripped to shreds. It was still alive, despite the amount of its blood covering the ground. It whinnied as it saw them, eyes wide in terror.

This time, Theresias cursed loudly. He drew a dagger and ended the poor creature's misery, then he looked closer at the wounds covering the animal's legs. "Bites", said one of his men who had stepped next to him.

"Do you know what did this?"

"Nah. It wasn't big or it would've reached higher. Wolves, maybe? Falkreath's known for its wolves."

"Hm." He turned around, facing the Vigilants and the couple. "Listen, all of you. The fog is some kind of dark magic, but if we stay inside the house, we are safe. Real night is breaking soon anyway, so we will try it again tomorrow with clairvoyance spells and more torches. Any objections?" Heads were shaken. "Good. Organize a watch and then try to sleep."

The man embraced his trembling wife. "Let's go to bed. Don't worry, we'll be safe. If anyone knows how to deal with this it's the Vigil."

They walked upstairs. As they passed the door to the first floor of the library tower, in which Vigilant Tomasius was probably still trying to decipher the journal, the woman realized he didn't know about the latest events. She knocked but received no answer. When she opened the door, she knew why.

The man was slumped over the book. The few remaining pages were covered with a surprisingly little amount of blood, considering that the Vigilant's throat had been ripped clean out. Of course this was noticed only later when the woman's screams had already faded from Lakeview Manor's halls, when the people were lying restless, staring in the darkness, not ready for the terrors to come.


End file.
